Best Local Boy Made Bad

Steve Diet Goedde

The part of bad that feels good is integral to the vocation of erotic/fetish photographer Steve Diet Goedde. The 1983 St. Louis University High graduate first turned his camera on the world of dominatrices, vamps and vixens about 10 years ago and has built a serious reputation for his skills at capturing gutterish glamor, latex-driven lust and other ideas that pictures may communicate better than words. His black-and-white and color photos of women in bondage, leaning over cars and industrial artifacts, slyly proffering their cleavage, propped in 10-inch heels, pulling on rubber arm-length gloves, pouting in ruby-red lipstick, topped with Bettie Page wigs, teasing in see-through outfits, wrapped in ultratight latex minidresses, restrained by corsets, modeling black stockings and garters, and taunting the viewer with expressions of cold lust appeal to a certain crowd into fetish, S/M and B/D ideology and to a certain vibe that may lurk within us all. His 1998 coffee-table opus, The Beauty of Fetish, as well as postcard collections of his work, make swell gifts for any grownup. Hollywood resident Goedde is a product of the classes of the early '80s at SLUH that also yielded film composer and director Bill Boll, directors George Hickenlooper and Chris Curtis, author and screenplay writer James Gunn and performance artist Tim Gallaher. See what Catholic school can do for a young man?